Ithaka S+R Faculty Report featured at ALCTS Forum

Monday, June 28, 8:00-10:00 a.m.
Washington Convention Center, Ballroom B

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services will
present a presentation and discussion of the recently released Ithaka
S+R faculty survey at the ALCTS Forum on Monday, June 28, at the ALA
Annual Conference in Washington, DC. The Forum begins at 8 a.m. in the
Washington Convention Center, Ballroom B, and precedes the ALCTS
President’s Program featuring Dr. Francine Berman.

Moderated by ALCTS President Mary Case, university librarian at the
University of Illinois-Chicago, the presentation will raise a number of
provocative hypotheses about the future of library services and
collections, as well as scholarly communications more broadly in a
digital world, and will lead into a vibrant discussion of the possible
implications of these findings for libraries, publishers and scholarly
societies. Ross Housewright and Roger C. Shonfeld of Ithaka S+R will
give an overview of this study’s three major sets of findings. Brian
Schottlaender, The Audrey Geisel University librarian at the University
of California at San Diego, will provide commentary.

Ithaka S+R recently released this report on findings from its Faculty
Survey 2009, the fourth in a series of surveys conducted over the past
decade that have examined faculty attitudes and behaviors on key issues
ranging from the library as information gateway and the need for
preservation of scholarly material, to faculty engagement with
institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open
access. Among its findings:
• Discovery and the Evolving Role of the Library
Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent
years and, as a result, the academic library is increasingly being
disintermediated from the discovery process, presenting libraries with
some key challenges but also the opportunity to reallocate resources to
other priorities.
• The Format Transition for Scholarly Works
Faculty members’ growing comfort in relying exclusively on digital
versions of scholarly materials opens new opportunities for libraries,
new business models for publishers and new challenges for preservation.
• Scholarly Communications
Publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, faculty members and others
have laid significant groundwork for reforming various aspects of the
scholarly communications system, but faculty attitudes are driven by
incentives and suggest the need for continued leadership.

Roger C. Schonfeld leads the research efforts at Ithaka S+R. His work
has focused on shifts in faculty attitudes and research practices in an
increasingly electronic environment; shifts in teaching practices and
the future of instruction; and the academic library in a digital
environment, including the economics, preservation and policy issues
associated with the transition from print to electronic formats for
scholarly literature and government documents. Ross Housewright is a
research analyst at Ithaka S+R, where his work has focused principally
on evaluating shifting faculty attitudes and practices in an electronic
environment and on the changing roles of the academic library in the
digital age, with a particular emphasis on the policy and preservation
issues of the print to electronic transition for scholarly works and
government information.

The report is available on the ITHAKA web site at:
www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009

M. Dina Giambi
Past-President, Association for Library Collections & Technical Services
(ALCTS),
a division of the American Library Association